Daddy's Girls (51)
The fire department was there in less than ten minutes, the regular force and the volunteers on their heels, and Thad took off with them. Her sisters and Morgan and Billy came to find Kate at the barn, and she gave Billy the job of continuing to ring the old fire bell, while Morgan, Caroline, and Gemma helped the men spraying the roof of the barn with hoses. Ranch hands were getting as many horses as they could into trailers. The horses were looking wild-eyed, but they wanted to have them ready to move at a moment’s notice if the fire turned in their direction. From the distance, Kate couldn’t tell which way it was going. A few minutes later, a helicopter swooped by overhead to check the fire from the air. They would call in the fire planes if they needed them later, but it hadn’t reached those proportions yet. Gemma flashed by on her way to help the men getting the horses into the trailers. Fire was their worst fear on the ranch, and they had at least one bad one a year in the area, sometimes more, once the grass was dry, and the temperatures rose. It had been a dry year, so this could be severe.
By four that morning, the planes to spray the fire were hard at work. Kate was dying to get in her truck to follow the fire trucks to the fire. She hadn’t seen Thad since he drove off and left her. Most of the horses were in trailers by then, frightened and whinnying, but ready to move if they had to. There were hundreds of men spread out across the ranch, doing their jobs, and at seven o’clock they could see men and trucks starting to return, and the planes flew back in the direction they came from. Kate could tell from all the signs that the fire had been contained and the worst of the danger was over. At this time of year, a small fire could become a blaze and wipe out thousands of acres, homes, and livestock. She had seen it before and sometimes it took days to contain the fire.
By ten o’clock that morning, Thad came back filthy, his face blackened with soot and ash, and red from the heat, but everyone had done their job. Two of the fire trucks followed his truck back to the ranch, and the drivers stopped to talk to Kate and the men. They weren’t going to put the horses back in the barn yet, waiting to make sure that the fire was as contained as they believed it was.
Kate was standing with Caroline when the men got off the trucks, and ranch hands handed out bottles of water, when she saw Caroline give a start and look at one of the men.
“Tom McAvoy?” she said, as he gratefully took a bottle of water and drained it. They’d been in the thick of it for eight hours, and they were wet from the hoses, and hot from the flames in their heavy suits with their masks and helmets slung over their arms. He grinned as soon as he saw her. His red hair was plastered to his head and face, and he had streaks of soot all over his cheeks, but she had recognized him in an instant. He had been her boyfriend senior year in high school, and he had gone into the fire department when she’d left for college. And a year later when she came back, he was married and had a baby.
“Caro?” he said, as his face broke into a broad grin. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here for the summer. Gemma’s here too.” She was talking to some of the firemen she had recognized from school, and they looked shy with her, knowing she was a big star now. But there was nothing shy about Tom McAvoy and never had been. “How are your kids?” she asked him.
“My oldest is applying to veterinary school at UC Davis. The twins are at UCSB, and my baby just graduated from high school. She’s getting married in September.” They started young in the Valley, and it was impressive that he had three in college. She had lost track of the fact that he had four kids. “What about yours?” She pointed to Morgan and Billy handing out bottles of water to firefighters. Thad had just given the order to get the horses back into the barn. The danger was over. They’d been lucky. August was usually the worst month for fires all up and down the California coast, and especially in the valleys.
“How’s Ellen?” Caroline asked him politely about his wife, a girl she’d gone to school with and never liked.
“Happy, married to someone else, with two more kids. We got divorced about ten years ago. I don’t think you’ve been here for a while.”
“No, I haven’t,” she admitted.
“What about you? Still married?” It was an interesting question at the moment, for which she didn’t have an easy answer. She hesitated just long enough for it to catch his attention.
“Yes, I guess I am,” she finally responded. “Peter stayed in Marin for the summer. I’m here with my sisters.” Without spelling it out to him, he got the distinct impression that something was wrong, and he nodded.
“We got lucky with the wind tonight,” he told her. “It could have been a bad one, if the wind had turned on us. It didn’t. We had a couple of real bad ones last year, wiped out acres of homes, and the Canyon Ranch.” She had heard about it from Kate and forgotten. It was a worry for them every year too, and there was little you could do to protect yourself from it, except keep the brush cleared away, and react quickly when it happened. As he chatted with her, one of his men came up and addressed him as “Captain.”
“You’re a captain now?” Caro smiled at him.
“Hell, I should be. I just turned forty. I’ve been in the department since I was eighteen.” Like a lot of the kids they had gone to school with, and even Gemma, he hadn’t gone to college. “I’m planning to retire from the department in ten years and run my own business. I’ve got a small business started now. With three kids in college, I’ll be working for the next hundred years to help them pay off their student loans. By the way, I’m sorry about your dad. Our guys came out right away, but there was nothing they could do.” She nodded and thanked him, as more of his men came up to talk to him. They had left a detail where the fire was, and they wanted to get the trucks back to the firehouse, so the men could rest and take over the shifts later that afternoon, to stay near the fire until it was fully out. “Duty calls.” He smiled at her. “I’ll call you if you’ll be here for a while.”